Letter: Reader’s tax burden letter was shortsighted

Comment

The State Journal-Register

Writer

Posted May. 4, 2014 at 1:09 AM

Posted May. 4, 2014 at 1:09 AM

These comments are in response to Margaret Pickering’s letter (“Let others bear the tax burden,” April 22) in which she stated that only people who use services provided by government should be the ones to pay for them.

In fact, she regards paying for such services as a burden. For example, she noted that she drives very little yet has to pay road taxes.

I would point out that her mail carrier, her paper carrier, her fire and police and ambulance services, her trash hauler, maybe even friends and family, all reach her home by way of those roads.

She also stated that she does not use the schools and therefore shouldn’t have to pay for them. Again I will point out that every time she calls a plumber who attended a public school she is using the school system. The same analogy can be made to include her doctor, her bank teller, her police officer, her grocery checker, her attorney, her dentist, even the staff at the newspaper who make it possible for her to get information and respond to it. If these people attended public school, up to and including a public medical university, she is benefiting from the education they received there.

We do not delegate taxes to schools because our own children attend. We pay taxes for public education so that we can live in an educated society and reap the benefits the members of that society can offer us. I, for one, am grateful that people who think like she does weren’t making the decisions when I was in school.